1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer network methodologies, and particularly to a peer-to-peer DNS networking method.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Domain Name System (DNS) plays a major role in Internet connectivity by mapping a user-friendly host name to an IP address that can be dealt with by network devices. The DNS consists of a hierarchy of DNS servers with 13 root name servers at the top of the hierarchy. The IP addresses of the thirteen root name servers are hard-coded in a root hints file in every recursive or caching DNS server. DNS provides a critical core service, and its absence has a severe impact on other application-layer protocols, such as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), file transfer protocol (FTP), and simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP). Thus, for any network, DNS provides a vital service, and without it the network is deemed isolated and blocked from using Internet services. The DNS service could be impacted by misconfiguration causing unavailability of the DNS servers. It can also be interrupted as a result of intentional blocking from higher name servers, denial of service (DoS) attacks, cache poisoning, and compromised data. To countermeasure such attacks, researchers have proposed several remedies spanning a wide range of solutions, such as using DNS security extensions, using Anycast routing, manipulating the time-to-live (TTL) value, and increasing the efficiency of DNS caching. Yet there remains an unfulfilled need effectively countermeasure the aforementioned attacks.
Thus, a peer-to-peer DNS networking method solving the aforementioned problems is desired.